More voices. The wagons were close. Two more bullets whipped past his head. The second scratched the tip of his ear, blood dribbling down the side of his neck.
Quillen angled his Slatedancer in a zigzagging motion about the stones. It would be all too easy for the beast to break a leg, and he was far too exposed on horseback, even in this haze. Better to find cover, collect his bearings and―
A stinging pain erupted in his left shoulder. The Slatedancer reared up and tossed him from the saddle. Quillen rolled among the pebbles, breath knocked free of his lungs. The horse crashed down beside him and shuddered.
No time to check it. Quillen retrieved his fallen hat and rifle before scrambling into the rocks. Gunfire erupted from everywhere. Men shouted, horses shrieked. He peered up again at the surrounding cliffs. Augustine would never position herself far from the battle. She’d require a proper sight line to see everything unfold, especially under such a heavy fog.
He continued weaving forward. Corpses piled around him, one with a silver star on its coat, another with a blood splatter tattoo on its elbow. He must be getting close…
A metal spyglass glimmered under the muted daylight, high above the rocks on the other side of the road.
Right where the gunfire was loudest.
Quillen inhaled a deep breath. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d run into the middle of a pitched battle, not since his days serving as a sharpshooter in the trenches of the Orbin Rebellion. But never like this.
The collar pressed itself tighter about his neck. There wasn’t much choice but to chance it. He had his orders.
He slung the Wexler rifle over his uninjured shoulder and dashed across the uneven stones. Bullets ripped past in all directions. He leaped over the bodies of fallen horses and dead men. Bloodstained hands with broken fingers tried latching onto the fringes of his coat, but he shook himself free of their grip.
The first wagon appeared. Two well-dressed men blocked his path, a pair of rifles leveled at his head. But Quillen’s revolver was already in hand. He fanned the hammer, one shot into each of their chests. The men crumpled in a heap against the wagon's side, dark stains soaking the paneled wood. Aurora Gulch lawmen, based on the glint of the silver stars pinned to their coats. A shame that―
Something sharp bit into Quillen’s lower back, and his revolver skittered to the ground. He staggered forward, blood trickling down his shirt, the world slipping into a momentary blur. Oblivion take him―he’d just be another ordinary mortal soon. The power of the Vicrosse Cairns continued to slip away.
But there was no time to get into a shootout down here. He had to keep moving.
A sharp cliff face came into view. Quillen adjusted the strap of his rifle and searched the rocks for any usable footholds.
The first dozen lengths of ascent were easy, but it didn’t take long for his muscles to begin trembling from the strain, palms coated with sweat. His injuries rebelled against him in rolling waves of agony. First one outstretched hand lost its grip on the stone, then the other. But never both at once. Hopefully it would stay that way.
He chanced a look back down, but there wasn’t much to see aside from the wafting tendrils of smoke and fog. Quillen gritted his teeth and resumed the climb. Bursts of gunfire and screams of dying men continued to drift upward from the murky haze.
His fingers grappled for the ledge. He pulled himself over the threshold onto firm ground, collapsed and stared up into a dull gray sky. Thousands of phantom needles lanced up his arms and legs, but if he stopped now―he might not ever get up.
Quillen dragged himself to his feet, shoulder and back burning from the exertion. More blood soaked into his shirt and the lining of his coat. He drew a knife from his belt and hobbled between the protruding stones.
Augustine’s remaining darkcoat appeared at the fog’s edge, one palm resting on his revolver handle. The man’s attention was on the battle below rather than the ledge. Perhaps enjoying the spectacle a little too much. A foolish mistake.
The echo of screams and gunfire was more than enough to mask Quillen’s faltering footsteps, despite his condition. He pushed the darkcoat’s head forward and ran the knife across the man’s exposed throat, waiting until the gurgle of blood ceased before lowering the body into the dirt.
A familiar hum mingled with the cries of dying men and their guns. Augustine stood near the cliff’s edge, the extended spyglass in one hand, the girl held in a protective cocoon with the other. She rocked the child back and forth while singing that same wistful melody.
Quillen raised his knife. Every step forward was one closer to completing this task and having the Oblivion-cursed collar removed. But Warrick and Constable Hendry were mistaken if they thought Augustine could be taken alive. The only way she’d ever give up the girl was in death.
A pebble ground beneath his boot. The singing stopped, and Quillen dove behind a nearby rock. Two bullets knocked his hat loose. Another buried itself into the dirt at his feet, the remaining three ricocheting off the coarse slab.
“I know it’s you, marksman.” The metallic clink of empty shells struck the stone. “I figured you’d be dead by now, but I should’ve known better.” A pause. “You’re here for my Dear One, aren’t you?”
Quillen adjusted the grip on the knife hilt, his other hand reaching for the rifle. Not that it would do much good in his current state. He couldn’t risk hitting the girl.
“I’ve seen the way you look at her,” Augustine said, “and the way she looks at you. You want her for yourself, you and whoever you’ve been conspiring with.”
Pain radiated up Quillen’s left side, his breath coming in shallow gasps. He had to stall for time. Perhaps he could catch Augustine off guard, and if not―better to die on his feet than cowering like a worm beneath a rock.
“I won’t let you take her,” Augustine said. “She’s family, like you were supposed to be.” The cock of a hammer. “Now come out.”
Quillen sheathed his knife and limped forward. Augustine smiled. Her revolver was aimed at his chest.
“Your rifle.” She pressed the girl tighter against her. “Drop it.”
Quillen unslung the weapon from his shoulder.
“Now kick it here.”
The Wexler halted at Augustine’s feet. She eyed his bloody clothes a moment before shaking her head―then tossed her own revolver to the ground.
“Shooting you now would be too easy, marksman.” Augustine brushed the girl aside and reached for the combat knives at her belt. “You were never worthy of my Dear One’s affections.”
Quillen drew his own blade. He extended his left arm for balance, but the limb tingled, forearm already dripping with blood. It wouldn’t be of much use to him here.
Augustine lunged forward. Quillen reversed with a spin, but her knife sliced into his injured arm before his body could obey. Twist and swing, feint and cut. Augustine caught him again on the upper right thigh. He countered with a backhanded slash, but she danced out of his reach. Quillen took another nick across the shoulder, too slow to dodge or block in time.
“I thought you were different from the rest of these fools. That you truly understood my art, appreciated a waylay’s beauty.” Augustine’s lips curled back in a snarl. “I don’t like being wrong.”
Quillen spat a wad of blood at his feet. He wouldn’t last much longer like this, though what happened to him now didn’t really matter. The girl’s fate had already been decided. Warrick would make sure of that, whether it was through him or others like him. Unless the child could somehow get away from here, far enough beyond the Empire’s reach…
Perhaps he could give her that sliver of a chance.
They continued circling. Quillen’s muscles tensed. The wounds he’d take would be fatal, but that was of little concern. If he charged Augustine from this height―a fall guaranteed both of their deaths. It would be a welcome release from it all. From Warrick’s servitude, the Imperial Court’s demands, his endless tasks and labors…
&n
bsp; Augustine smirked at him. “You might be divine with a rifle, marksman, but your knife skills are pathetic.”
The blade slipped from Quillen’s fingers, rivulets of sweat and blood dripping down along with it. He lunged at Augustine and propelled her forward. Something sharp plunged into his side, the tip of a second knife edge cutting into the skin of his right cheek.
A loud crack rang out across the empty cliffs.
Quillen skidded to a halt. Blood dribbled down his chest. The sulfuric smell of explosive powder filled the air.
He stepped back from Augustine. She wavered a moment before dropping her knives, one hand going to the bullet wound between her breasts. Her wide eye fell upon the girl standing behind her―the little mousy girl holding Augustine’s revolver in a double grip. The hammer was down, a thin wisp of gun smoke rising from the barrel.
“D…Dear One…?”
Augustine reached toward the girl with a trembling hand, but the child recoiled from her outstretched fingers. Augustine crumpled to the stone.
Blood soaked the sides of Quillen’s face and what was left of his clothes. He slumped to his knees alongside Augustine. The girl stared at him and lowered the revolver.
“Run,” Quillen said. “Get away from this place. If you stay…”
The world tumbled about in a spinning blur. The last thing he saw before the darkness took him were the girl’s boots shuffling past.
#
Quillen’s eyes snapped open.
He lay on a pile of blankets in the back of a moving wagon, its wheels grinding upon the dirt and stone of an uneven road. Something pressed against his cheek. A piece of rough fabric. A bandage? It wasn’t the only place. More were wrapped around his arms, legs, and chest. He tried to sit up, but a vicious pain in his side forced him down.
Oblivion take him. He was still alive.
“Easy, gunner.” Warrick peered at him from the driver’s bench. “I bound your injuries as best I could, but I’m no surgeon. We have a ways to go until the Aurora Gulch physician can have a look at you.”
A tear in the top of the wagon’s cover yielded streaks of sunlight peeking through a layer of white clouds. Quillen inhaled a sharp gasp. Warrick wasn’t alone. The mousy girl sat next to her.
“The Blood Splatter Gang is no more,” Warrick said. “Constable Hendry and his deputies will round up the stragglers soon enough, though there were more losses than expected. It’s fortunate I secured that contract with the Coltons, or else the day might’ve ended far different. Fleur’s men seemed to know we were coming.” Her tone went flat. “You didn’t let it slip to anyone what we were planning, did you?”
Quillen shook his head. No doubt they’d had an eavesdropper on their earlier conversation. The second darkcoat would’ve been eager to earn his way back into Augustine’s favor, or perhaps it had been Augustine herself. Irrelevant details, now.
He leaned down and blinked. Something had changed. His vision was sharper, his hearing crisper. There was a pounding in his head that had nothing to do with the rush of his own blood.
The magistrate’s heartbeat.
Upon habit, Quillen placed a stiff hand to the collar at his throat―and instead found only bare skin.
“I had to remove the artifact,” Warrick said. “You would’ve died from your injuries otherwise. Besides, with our task complete―there’s no more need for you to wear it.”
It was as if a lingering illness these past few long months had finally begun to lift. And his appearance…
The girl craned her neck toward him and pointed at his face. “I like you better this way.” Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper. “It looks…right.”
Quillen stared. Those were the first words he’d ever heard her speak.
With the steel collar gone, the colors had probably returned to his eyes and retreated from his hair. Mismatched irises of crimson and violet. A scalp full of ashen strands.
He peered closer at the girl. She still held the two spice jars in her hands, the ones bought from the general store in Pebblemouth.
“A memory of home.” The girl tapped the lids of shimmering ivy and dry safflower. She gave him a weak smile. “My real one, anyway. Before Fleur came, and…”
Her lower lip trembled. Augustine had never told him how the girl ended up with her gang. Captured during a farm raid, or so Quillen had heard. Augustine had claimed the child for herself and killed the rest.
“I’m Cerys,” the girl said. “Cerys Talvere. If not for you and Miss Warrick―”
“Cerys has much to look forward to once we arrive in Mirren.” Warrick placed an arm around the child’s shoulders. The girl tensed, but she didn’t shy away from the magistrate’s touch. “I’ve told her what to expect at the Imperial Court, and she’s eager to join the Vicrosse Gunners’ ranks. She wants to be just like you.”
The girl smiled at him, but Quillen couldn’t bring himself to meet her gaze. Had Warrick explained to her how unlikely she was to cross through the Cairns? Not even an Horologe could know that fate for certain. And if the girl somehow survived, she might not remember much of this―or any of her current life. She might not remember much of anything at all.
He opened his mouth to speak, but the words refused to form. All that came forth was a dry rasp.
Warrick flashed a grin and raised her left hand. The Imperial Signet ring glowed a dull ashen.
Quillen’s jaw tightened. Of course. Warrick had already gone to a lot of trouble of retrieving the girl, had even Compelled him to do so. She wouldn’t want him spoiling it all by revealing the truth now.
He settled back into the pile of blankets. The girl would’ve been better off with Fleur Augustine. All that was left for her now was a quick death among the Cairns―or a slow one in servitude to the Imperial Court and the Empire’s endless labors.
Like him. And all the other Vicrosse Gunners.
____
Copyright 2019 Christopher A. Jos
Christopher A. Jos is a teacher currently living in Alberta, Canada, and is a self-professed fantasy and science-fiction junkie. His speculative fiction has appeared in publications such as The Arcanist, Theme of Absence, and The Colored Lens.
Visit him at https://christopherajos.com/ or find him on Twitter @ChristopheAJos.
__
Giganotosaurus is published monthly by Late Cretaceous and edited by LaShawn M. Wanak.
http://giganotosaurus.org
The Mortal Shackles Page 3